The Pacific covers one third of the Earth’s surface. It is the largest and deepest ocean on the planet; the landmass of Australia is dwarfed by its size and could fit into the Pacific Ocean at least twenty times.

Australia has strong connections to the Pacific through historical, political and geographical ties. We are the western border to this watery expanse in which many thousands of islands break the deep blue surface in chaotic patterns like stars in the sky until the Pacific is hemmed in again, to the west, by the east coast of the Americas.

So large is the Pacific and vast the distance between island groups that each is distinctive in its own right for the array of animals, plants and the people that live there. Many Pacific Island communities were and are connected to one another through trade and social links even when the distance between islands is considerable. Some cultures also developed in isolation, such as the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island. Papua New Guinea supports hundreds of distinct yet interconnected cultures but the country is still large enough for relatively isolated communities to have developed unique arts.

The National Gallery of Australia’s first Director, James Mollison, was instrumental in developing the Pacific Arts collection. With great foresight, he acquired many of the works in the exhibition Gods, ghosts and men: Pacific arts from the National Gallery of Australia. Being judiciously careful in his selection, Mollison acquired a number of the most iconic objects in the collection, including the Ambum stone, the Double figure from a housepost [To-reri uno] from Lake Sentani and, in 1985, Max Ernst’s private collection of non-western art – some of which is displayed in the exhibition.

The Gallery holds collections of traditional and
contemporary Pacific arts – the latter includes the largest
collection of contemporary prints from Papua New
Guinea in Australia. Both of these spheres of the Pacific
Arts collection are radically different in many respects yet
very similar in others. While the traditional arts consist of
masks, shields and ancestral sculptures that (for the main
part) are not still in use among Pacific communities, the
artists working today sometimes draw on this heritage
as a source of identity. The exhibition Gods, ghosts and
men focuses firmly on the traditional sculptural arts as
the recent travelling exhibition Imagining Papua New
Guinea featured many great works from the contemporary
collection. Discussions on the classification or divisions
between art and artefact, traditional or contemporary may
seem to be required but are not necessary; any culture that
an artist works within is subject to change. It is the very
nature of human cultures to change due to internal and
external influences. For the Pacific region great changes
were experienced for centuries prior to the introduction of
Western expeditions in the eighteenth century.

The recognition of traditional Pacific arts as art rather
than examples of material culture has a fairly short history,
shorter than one might expect. During the late nineteenth
century, the anthropological understanding was that
unravelling the differing forms, motifs and designs would
assist in delineating one tribal community from another;
it was not an admiration of the aesthetic values of a work
and its ability to affect the viewer.1

Such an appreciation for Pacific arts has, in part, a
debt to the contemplation of African art by artists in the
cubist and expressionist movements during the early 1900s.
The championing and occasional appropriation by artists,
mainly in Europe, of what were seen to be the exotic arts
of cultures living in distant lands did not address any real
understanding of the Pacific arts or the people who created
them. It was more the dynamic of the exotic tribal object
being a touchstone or visual cue to connect with, or unlock
an artist’s innate sense of primitivism.

By the 1920s, art from the Pacific struck a chord with
members of the surrealist movement who were attracted
by the less structured almost subconscious plasticity
inherent to Melanesian art compared to the seeming
rigidity of African masks and figures. Melanesian figurative sculpture, especially those of Papua New Guinea’s Sepik
River region, often depict mythical beings with both
animal and human attributes along with flowing surface
designs that surrealist artists likened to having dream-like
qualities – which fired their discussions and creativity in
the arts. During the mid twentieth century in Australia,
artists were introduced to and inspired by the Pacific arts
in various situations beyond the large cluttered cases in
museums. William Dobell and Guy Warren’s experiences in
wartime New Guinea left lasting impressions, as it did for
many Australians who served in the Pacific Islands during
this time. Far removed from the Pacific itself, other artists
working in Britain during the 1940s, such as James Gleeson
and Robert Klippel, were exposed to a wealth of Pacific
arts through their mutual friend, the ‘primitive’ art dealer
William Ohly.

Pacific arts as an influence to artists from outside
the Pacific has been well documented from a Western
viewpoint, beginning with the activities of Robert Louis
Stevenson and Paul Gauguin; however, interest in the
motivations and actions of indigenous artists whose names
are now lost is very much a later twentieth-century move in
the study of Pacific arts.

A pioneer in observing Pacific arts to gain an indigenous
viewpoint of the artistic process was Professor Anthony
Forge of the Australian National University, whose seminal
studies in the mid-to-late twentieth century of Abelam art
still hold impact today.2 The National Gallery of Australia is
very fortunate to have received a gift in memory of Forge.
The gift is formed of many works Forge purchased from the
Abelam people and other communities during his work in
Papua New Guinea.

Several works from this gift are exhibited in Gods,
ghosts and men along with works that Sir William Dargie
collected directly from the communities and individuals
during his expeditions to Papua New Guinea in the late
1960s. The Gallery is very lucky to have collections formed
in ‘the field’ as information about the works is usually
recorded. An important collection gathered in the late
nineteenth century is the Fellows collection of Massim art.
This collection of art from south-eastern Papua New Guinea
comprises of works made for or given to Reverend Samuel
Fellow and his wife Sarah in recognition of the Kiriwinian
people’s embrace of Christianity.

When viewing works in the exhibition Gods, ghosts
and men, we are really looking at only the husks, the
physical elements, of rituals and festive events – which are
still remarkably moving even though they are now silent.
The dramatic spectacle of song, dance and the sense of
immediacy the audience experienced when viewing masked
performers cannot be contained and collected.

The bridal veil (ambusap) with its painstakingly applied
shell decorations would have been a treasured item by
its owner. The veil formed a major part of a series of
adornments a bride would wear for the important event of
entering her husband’s house for the first time. How the
wearer of this particular veil (presumably the envy of other
women in the community for wearing attractive finery)
must have felt upon this occasion in her life we cannot
guess at, yet the work itself, its flowing intricacy, conveys
a sense of elegance befitting the event it was made for.

Religious beliefs for Pacific communities prior to the
twentieth century were linked by the earnest need to
connect with, placate, charm and control the influences
of spirits and the cosmic order though the use of magic
and rituals.

For the majority of Melanesian cultures their spiritual
beliefs could broadly be considered animist in the sense
that all things are equal: humans are on an equal footing
to every living thing in their environment and each object
has a soul or spirit connected to it. In the Eastern Solomon
Islands, people believed – and, in places, still believe – in
water spirits that can manipulate the sea and travel on
rainbows. These spirits are called adaro. The Gallery’s adaro
figure has porpoise- or dolphin-like, which the water spirit
can control. Where he steps, shoals of fish follow. The
figure, carved by Tigoana, is not only a representation of an
adaro spirit but can also be thought of as the adaro spirit
itself; the sculpture is a vessel for the spirit to enter when
called upon for assistance.

Another two works that, now silent, can only hint
at their once pivotal and chaotic importance for their
audience are the Susu masks from New Britain. These
masks are not just striking in their appearance; while worn,
they are the very spirits themselves – through performance,
they become the manifestation of a particular spirit, if only
for the briefest of moments.

To ‘activate’ a mask, a figure or other object and make
it alive with the spirit it was intended to house involved
convincing the spirit or ancestor to enter the work through
invocation and ritual adherences. The use of magical
ingredients play a major role in activating these vessels:
special herbs, pieces of animal meat, powdered lime, shells,
money and even bodily fluids are some of the symbolically
offered ritual substances that could be spat or smeared
on objects to energise the connections between worlds to a spirit or an ancestor. In some instances, the process involved the application of colour as certain colours have magical importance and the act of painting a work would entice the desired spirit to take residence in the object.

Strict rules needed to be observed by the artist, including the abstention from eating certain foods or entering into sexual or social activity until the process of producing the work of art was completed. The idea of activating or breathing life into a mask or figure of an ancestor for it to be communed with, supplicated or implored to assist in some way was common across the Pacific although each community developed distinct approaches – from simple rituals to elaborate ceremonies – to procure the support of the ancestors, gods and spirits.

The exhibition includes several shields from Papua New
Guinea and one from Awyu people of West Papua from
the Max Ernst collection. Each shield is highly decorated;
indeed, it is rare to encounter shields from Melanesia
without carved or painted designs across their surfaces.
The meandering designs on the small leaf-shaped Awyu
people shield may depict body adornments, geographical
locations or even a rapidly moving river but, without
solid information, the intent behind the motifs remains
cryptographic while the imagery remains bold. Nonetheless,
each shield’s design identified the community or clan of
their owner and, through the strength of the designs, fear
could be instilled into an opponent.

One of the contemporary works in the exhibition is
a shield painted by Kaipel Ka. The shield is actually quite
old with a pecked design below its more recently painted
surface. Ka has produced series of shields with identical
designs for warring groups, maintaining the collective
identity of the fight group in much the same way football
colours are worn. The shield depicts two birds of paradise
perched upon a skull with glaring eyes and below is the
slogan ‘six 2 six’ which, in the Wahgi Valley area, is an
invitation to party all night long; although, in this context,
it has become an aggressive statement intended to unnerve
the opponent – ‘we will fight you from dawn until dusk,
six to six’.

Weapons across the Pacific were also embellished
beyond their brutal function as bludgeoning clubs to a
level where many communities, particularly in Polynesia,
enlisted specialist carvers to produce beautifully balanced,
immaculately finished weapons that played a great part in
communicating the high esteem accorded to the owner.
The face-like business end of the U’u club from the
Marquesas Islands is a superb example of the elaboration
and care taken by specialist artists in producing war clubs.
The U’u club is immediately one of the most iconic works
of art from the Pacific. It couples functionality with a
delicate attention to detail; and those details have been
adapted from the socially important temporal art of body
decoration, tattoo.

Several of the Polynesian works exhibited relate in some
way to their owners status and prestige, none more so
than the objects that were once associated to those of high
social rank. The stool No’oanga from the Cook Islands, with its four legs reminiscent of a crouching animal poised and
ready to move, was the property of an ariki (a hereditary
chieftain). It was used during meetings to ensure no-one
else’s head was higher than that of the chief.

In pre-Christian Polynesian societies, the head was
the most important part of the body as it has strong
connections with mana, a spiritual quality that generates
great respect. People and objects can both hold levels
of mana. Older objects absorb mana though their long
histories and connections with people and this mana can
still sometimes be felt or sensed by people who identify
particular works as part of their heritage.

A singularly magnificent work from the Pacific Arts
collection is the Maori cloak Huaki – fibre arts are rare in
Polynesia compared to objects produced in wood, stone
and bone. Cloak-making was an art whose secrets where
closely guarded by women who acquired the specialist skill
and knowledge to work flax into such robes of splendour.
Huaki are the rarest of all cloaks from New Zealand and
the Gallery’s example undoubtedly was owned by a leader
of great importance, a person with strong mana whose
majesty was visually communicated through wearing
the huaki.

Gods, ghosts and men divulges the richness and
diversity of this region but still barely scratches the surface
of the National Gallery of Australia’s collection of over two
thousand works from the Pacific. It reveals, however, the
greatest works by artists who were recognised within their
communities for their ability to create.

The names of many Pacific artists have been lost
over time or were simply not recorded when a work
was traded out of a community’s circles. However, this
lack of knowledge regarding the names of the artists or
the people who wore, danced, consulted or used these
works lends a certain enigmatic charisma. And it is these
small but magical mysteries that can enhance our ability
to contemplate and suspend our beliefs. In a similar vein
to the Surrealists, who contemplated Pacific arts with far
larger gaps in their understanding than we have today, we
can make closer connections between the works and the
ancestors and spirits that have been said to inhabit them.
We can imagine, for instance, that the housepost figure
Mogulapan is actually the spirit of Mogulapan himself and
that a mask is not just a mask but a spirit in physical form.

These intangible qualities affect our senses when
assessing the aesthetics of the Pacific arts – particularly so
with the expressive forms of Melanesian art – that set apart
the sculptures of ancestors and spirit beings from so many
of the other spheres of art within the National Gallery of
Australia.

Currently inanimate, these objects were once – and, in
some cases, possibly continue to be – more than superb
works of art. They are the spiritually charged places, the
lightening rods, where the ancestors themselves and
otherworldly spirits could interact with and influence the
human world. Although dormant, these charged works of
art can speak for themselves.

Crispin Howarth
Curator, Pacific arts, and curator of Gods, ghosts and men

Gods, ghosts and men: Pacific arts from the National Gallery of
Australia is proudly supported by the National Gallery of Australia
Council exhibitions fund.

1. A C Haddon, The decorative art of British New Guinea: a study in
Papuan ethnography, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 1894. For the period
in which it was produced, Haddon’s book remains an exemplary work
dealing with a comparative analysis of the visual arts of British New
Guinea.